Travel photographer Amos Chapple recently crossed into Turkmenistan on a three-day transit visa and was able to photograph many of the sights and monuments in Ashgabat, the capital and largest city. Turkmenistan is a single-party country, a former Soviet state, run by a president at the center of a cult of personality.

Photo: A young couple leave the Alem Entertainment Center in Ashgabat. The current president has a history of breaking obscure records. In 2012 the wheel atop this complex was entered into the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's largest enclosed Ferris wheel. The structure was built at a cost of $90m. (Photo by Amos Chapple via The Atlantic)

Deputies of the opposition fight with deputies of the majority for a second time in two days, during the second session of the newly elected Ukrainian parliament in Kiev on December 13, 2012. (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP Photo)

(L-R) A man nicknamed "Barcelona", Alexey Bolotov and Alexey Jakushin drink vodka as they travel by a pioneer motorised railcar on their way to Kalach, Sverdlovsk region, Russia October 18, 2015. The "pioneer," a light auxiliary rail vehicle, is a popular form of transport among people who live along the Alapayevsk railway. In a remote corner of the Urals region at the end of a narrow-gauge railway is Kalach, population about a dozen. Three decades ago 600 people called the village home, but the local forestry industry suffered as the former Soviet Union imploded and people moved away in search of work. In Kalach today there are no telephones, no mobile reception and only a few hours of electricity a day. (Photo by Maxim Zmeyev/Reuters)

Children carrying guns and flags or wearing Soviet-style uniforms have become a common sight at Victory Day parades and other events in Russian-controlled Crimea. Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists have warned that such displays point to a growing trend of promoting Russian patriotism among kids on the Crimean peninsula, annexed from Ukraine in 2014. Here: A young Crimean girl wears military-type clothes during a Victory Day celebration in Sevastopol on May 9, 2018. (Photo by Oleksandra Surgan/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty)

A vendor sells fruits and nuts at the Green Bazaar in Almaty January 23, 2015. Kazakhstan is spending billions of dollars of its reserves to keep devaluation of its currency gradual and reduce inflationary risks of the sort thrown up in Russia by the rouble's slide, analysts and former central bank officials say. Kazakhstan, Central Asia's largest economy, is closely tied to Russia through trade and, like other ex-Soviet states, has been feeling the pain of the crisis which has driven the rouble down 50 percent against the dollar since the start of 2014. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

“A fter the former Soviet Union conducted its first nuclear test in August 1949, the US reevaluated its postwar defense policies. With the US monopoly on atomic weapons broken, military and political leaders chose to diversify the American stockpile by developing thermonuclear and tactical nuclear weapons. One of the more interesting concepts to come out of this period was atomic artillery, which was successfully tested at the Nevada Proving Grounds (now the Nevada Test Site) in May 1953”. – Alan Carr. Photo: Atomic Annie at work during the Upshot-Knothole test series, 1953. (Photo by Los Alamos National Laboratory/US Army)

A photograph made available on 02 October 2016 showing Indian people dressed in traditional attire performing the Garba dance, a ritual performed to appease Goddess Durga, in a religious event named, “Abhivyakti 2016” during the nine-day long Navratri festival in Bhopal, India, 01 October 2016 Celebrated twice a year during the spring and the fall season, the Navratri festival is dedicated to the Hindu Goddess Durga. (Photo by Sanjeev Gupta/EPA)

A pedestrian leaps across a flooded portion of the La Paz and Seventh Street intersection as a winter storm arrived, Thursday, December 6, 2018 in Victorville, Calif. The second round of a fall storm dumped snow and rain that jammed traffic on Southern California highways and loosened hillsides in wildfire burn areas on Thursday. (Photo by James Quigg/The Daily Press via AP Photo)